Hey everyone, what's the good word? For me it's getting a new mountain bike and for the last couple weeks now I've been riding around and familiarizing myself with it. Nothing crazy, just an entry level hard tail, trail bike. But man I'm loving it so far. I've started building a trail here at home to ride with some fun turns and elevation changes and jumps etc. Trial and error testing has lead to some falls, though thankfully nothing major. I'm having a lot of fun with it so far and hopefully soon, before the weather really goes south and gets snowy, I and close friend will get to ride some fun forest roads we have in mind locally. My bike, for anyone who cares, is a 2021 Polygon Cascade 2. It's really solid and I would recommend if you're looking for something new to ride or just want to get started, or restarted like me, look at Polygon and this website here. Quality seems really excellent and the retailer has great customer support. The bikes are built, tuned, tested and shipped from their facility and I got mine in a mere three days.
Alright let's look at some game stuff.
AC Valhalla came out this week and so far I have to say that I really like it. It's a departure from the Assassin's Creed formula and I happen to think that's the best thing they could have done to the series. I say this as a guy who isn't a fan of AC in general. If I want to play Hitman I'll play Hitman. Valhalla feels a little more like Shadow of Mordor meets FarCry but more RPG than either. This has it's good and bad points but it's been a good experience so far. I've only got about 14 hours in the game but I can recommend it if you're like me and would just rather skip the rest of series. I can also say that lots of the reporting of the game running poorly seem exaggerated. I'm running a 3700X with 32BG of RAM and a Vega 64 with the install loading from a 3D Nand SSD. I'm playing at 1440p on full ultra settings, minus motion blur cos motion blur sucks, and I'm running anywhere from 55 to 70 FPS. The kicker here is that the resolution slider is at 90% instead of 100%. But that's it. It doesn't blur the game up too noticeably and it plays more or less perfect.
AMD is releasing RDNA2 on Wednesday and I fully expect to attempt to purchase a 6800XT. I also fully expect them to be sold out minutes and be in line for the next 2 months to be able to find one. For the first time ever there's also an incentive to build a brand specific PC as AMD is also incorporating a feature called Smart Access Memory (SAM) into the hardware. In order to use the feature set you'll need to have at least a 500 series motherboard coupled with a 5000 series AMD processor and use them with a 6000 series GPU. But working together SAM allows the CPU to access the entirety of the GPU's VRAM and it brings a performance uplift while gaming. NVIDIA says they also have some version of this tech coming right up and that they plan on making viable with any brand name, not just one. Makes sense since NVIDIA doesn't make CPU's and therefore have their own socket on a motherboard.
I like seeing that, there's actual competition being bred between AMD and NV in response to one another for the first time in a long time. It can only be good for us as consumers and the development of further products.
Our own TruLegendKiller, got his PS5 after a bit of a shipping SNAFU delivered to the wrong address. Thankfully the receiver of the package was an honest person and the issue was solved quickly. Seems the internal storage is a joke but otherwise he seems to be quite enjoying his new console. Hopefully he'll be able to write a little about it and we'll have some actual content on the site here aside from me rambling about WRUP.
So what are you guys playing this weekend?
Greywolfe: it's wrup time! which means time to tell you that i'm playing more magic. but also streaming more vampire. i think vampire's winding down, though [this is coteries of new york, the visual novel-flavoured version of the game] - i have very little desire to go through the plot again, so i think i'll call it quits as soon as i'm done. i've also had a bit of a hankering to revisit banjo kazooie, so i might do that.
AJ: Gradius II and No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle (whilst desperately struggling to ignore my own intense feelings of new console FOMO and/or jealousy).
Tru: Wait, it's W.R.U.P time? Damn, where did I leave it? Oh yeah... Got my Playstation 5, cue the club noises (Bew Bew Bew). Hooked that bad boy up tonight and stated on Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales. I'm LOVING it so far. The new Dualsense Controller feels so amazing. So as you may guess that's ALL I'm doing this weekend.I suppose if I have any time to spare I'll play something else like Warframe or Borderlands 3. Now if you excuse me, I got some Web-Slinging to do.
Scrooloose: More AC Valhalla for me and of course Deep Rock Galactic. I'll also be riding around while we have sun for the next couple of days and I'll be working as well.